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Nia with JAG and Parking in Manhattan

While in New York, I had a couple of burgers, so I added them to my Burger Blog. At one of the places, I was able to leave River at the apartment with Michael and go by myself. It was so nice to sit in a restaurant and not have to concern myself with River.

I also have a regular habit of visiting Schmackary's Cookies in Hells Kitchen every time I'm in town. This time I didn't have to because I was surprised to find that Zeke had gotten me a birthday gift of a large tin of them, which were delivered to the place I was staying. So I've been pigging out on delicious cookies.

River's ear seems much better. He almost never shakes his head or scratches any more and it smells a lot less. I missed the first day, but I gave him a dose of his ear drops on the second day. I'm supposed to be giving him treatments twice daily, so I'm about 75% behind schedule. His ears were fairly clean, though and almost nothing came out when I cleaned them.

In the afternoon, I fed River, then moved the car to a new parking spot and then went to the JCC to teach my class. This was another return to a place where one of the songs were created. And one of the students was there, grinning from ear to ear and reminding me of some of the movement details we had played with that I wasn't using.

I got cut off at the end of class. I wasn't aware that the class following started at 7:16, when we were scheduled to start at 6:15. Since I have 54 minutes of music and we didn't get started right on time, I was going over time. I got a high sign from Caroline, my producer, to quickly wrap it up, so I had the class stand and step out, skipping some of the cooling down movements.

And we immediately gathered everything up and cleared out while the next class stampeded in.

Walking home from that class, I started to feel a twinge in my back that ended up growing a lot worse. By the end of the night I was barely able to stand up straight due to the spasm in my lower back.

I had originally been scheduled to go back to Connecticut to teach my Orchestra routine, but it was cancelled due to low registration. My producer, Nancy, didn't want me to drive all that way for only three students, so we called it off. I'm glad, now, that I get that day off because I'm going to need it so my back can recover.

I had parked in a zone with confusing signage. On the same pole were two signs: one said "No Parking Tues & Fri 11am - 12:30 pm Street Cleaning" and the other said "No Parking 7am - 4pm on School Days". It is June 15, which could mean that school is in session or out for the summer. Come to find out later that school gets out in NYC on June 30, so I had to move my car by 7 the next morning.

I woke up at 6:45, sleepy and with an aching back that nearly prevented me from standing upright. I couldn't find my car key anywhere! I searched through all my pockets and all through the apartment as the time for legal parking was quickly dwindling away. After exhausting the search inside the apartment I came to the conclusion that one of two things could've happened. One was that I left the key at the JCC when I taught class there and the other was that I had left it in the car and forgot to lock it. (Fortunately, I cannot lock the key in the car; it prevents me from that error.)

So I decided to walk through the rain, four blocks to the car, on the off chance that the key is inside of it. I get to the block and the first thing I wonder is if the car will be there. Or if I had left it unlocked, with the key inside, and someone took off with it. But I spotted the car. My next thought was to hope that the key was inside. For that to be the case, the red blinking light would not be blinking. That indicates that the alarm is activated, which can only happen if the key is outside of the car. So I did see the red light as I walked toward the car, and my heart sunk. But I continued to walk to the car, for what reason I don't know. Much to my delighted surprise, when I got to the driver's side of the car, I found the key sitting on the side view mirror! Wet from being in the rain, but sitting there in full view.

I picked it up and clicked the button to unlock the car. It unlocked. Good, the rain hadn't destroyed the electronic key. I drove to a legal parking spot.

I don't know for sure what happened, but the only thing I can imagine that makes sense is that the key fell out of my pocket after parking last night. It fell out close enough to my car that some good samaritan passing by saw the key and placed it on the nearest Mini Cooper. Thank you SO MUCH kind, mysterious stranger.

For all of it's faults, I do have to admit, I love New York, and despite all of their faults, New Yorkers. Someone could have easily stolen my car or at least taken out a whole bunch of stuff that I had inside. This is one of those incidents that make me believe I live a charmed life.

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